Actress Parveen Babi found dead

Actress Parveen Babi has been found dead in her house in Mumbai's Juhu suburb.

"The residential society's secretary complained to us that she had not collected milk and newspaper from her doorstep for the last two days," Deputy Commissioner of Police Amitabh Gupta told rediff.com

"We opened the door of her house with the help of a duplicate key and found her body."

The body has not yet been claimed and the police are trying to trace her relatives.

Parveen Babi used to stay alone in the flat and rarely ventured out and interacted with anyone.

Parveen Babi, who belonged to the royal family of Junagad and did her schooling from Ahmedabad, entered the film industry in the early seventies.

Her first film was Charitraheen, in which she was paired opposite former cricketer Salim Durrani.

Stardom came after her work in Deewar along with Amitabh Bachchan and Shashi Kapoor.

She mesmerised an entire generation with her performances in blockbusters like Namak Halal and Amar Akbar Anthony.

In the early 1990s, she suddenly left for a foreign country where she spent a decade. The actress returned just three years ago and was beyond recognition, having put on a lot of weight.

She created a stir when she filed a petition in a local court charging foreign dignitaries and actor Amitabh Bachchan with attempting to kill her. However, her petition was dismissed for want of evidence.

She also filed an affidavit in a special court hearing the 1993 bomb blast case, saying she had evidence to throw light on the case. The court summoned her, but she did not come, saying she was afraid that people might kill her.